Controversial Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto announces his resignation to seek re-election in a bid to prove he has public support for his plans to reform local government.

His days as Japan’s rising political star may be over, but you can still count on Toru Hashimoto to cause a stir…and do a lot of talking.

Osaka’s firebrand mayor officially announced his resignation Monday to seek reelection, in a perplexing move he described as being necessary to break the political logjam hindering one of his key policy goals.

Local media and pundits are skeptical about whether the decision will have any practical impact on his policy agenda. Some even see the move as a waste of taxpayers’ money by an outspoken politician intent on getting himself back in the national spotlight after he drew international fire with comments he made last year on enforced wartime prostitution by the Japanese military.

“I am resigning as mayor, and will like to hold a mayoral election,” Mr. Hashimoto told reporters at the start of what became a two-hour-long news conference held in Osaka — longer than the nationally televised news conference last month by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie addressing the controversy surrounding the closure of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge.

Mr. Hashimoto, who also co-heads the conservative Japan Restoration Party (JRP), said he is stepping down and calling a snap election because he was unable to gain consensus for his plan to merge Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City into a Tokyo-like metropolitan government. An official at the Osaka City election board said mayoral elections could cost around Y600 million ($5.9 million).

But experts question whether the move will help push forward his agenda, as it would not affect the structure of the joint municipal and prefectural panel that has been discussing the matter. Mr. Hashimoto decided to call a snap election after the panel rejected his proposal to narrow down four ideas on merging the city and prefecture to only one.

“Mr. Hashimoto may be feeling frustrated with his waning influence – the move seems like a performance to gather attention,” said Koichi Nakano, political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. Mr. Hashimoto’s plan suffered a major setback last year when a candidate from his JRP lost in a mayoral election in the city of Sakai, located in Osaka Prefecture, by its incumbent mayor critical of Mr. Hashimoto’s merger plan.

During the news conference the media-savvy 44-year old mayor said that his reelection would give him the rightful public backing to move forward with formulating the plan. But he stressed that in the end, the decision to merge the city and prefecture would be put to a referendum.

Mr. Hashimoto came under international criticism last May when he said that the forcing into prostitution of so-called comfort women by the Japanese military during World War II was “necessary” for maintaining military discipline at the time. The comments dealt a heavy blow to Mr. Hashimoto’s JRP that was already struggling in the shadow of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s strong approval ratings and popular economic policies dubbed Abenomics.

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